Throwing Hot Coffee On The Donut Shop Worker Is Not A Reasonable Way To Resolve A Dispute

For years, we’ve advocated the use of the Executive E-mail Carpet Bomb as a way for customers to resolve disputes with companies. What he have never suggested is the Donut Shop Employee Coffee Bomb.

The video below, released by the Philadelphia Police Dept., shows a somewhat inaudible argument between a male customer and female staffer at a donut shop in West Philadelphia.

While the details are hazy, it’s obvious from the clip that the dispute involves whether or not the customer had paid for his sandwich. It sounds like he’s arguing that he’s already paid while she insists otherwise.

Regardless, it all goes straight to heck when she hands the man his cup of hot coffee, which he immediately hurls right back at her. He then storms out, but not before shouting at what appears to be another customer on his way out the door.

Police say the woman suffered severe burns as a result of this very bad consumer.

Philly police are now trying to ID the customer, who faces aggravated-assault charges.

It seems more and more to me, people are in their own little worlds. Driving…talking on the phone…texting…they are SO obsessed with their tiny worlds and families, that when something intrudes upon it, or something doesn’t go exactly right, they explode. It’s all “I’m gonna get mine and screw everyone else”.

Cities are people, you know, not anonymous piles of architecture. Some of us live here.

Besides, your remark indicates a potentially dangerous detachment from the reality that things like this happen everywhere, including wherever you happen to be right now. Possibly *particularly* whereever you happen to be right now, if you manage to communicate that supercilious biased attitude of yours to the people around you.

I’ve seen a donut shop worker throw an ENTIRE POT of coffee on a customer.

It was a few days before Christmas, crazy busy in the store, and the worker was working alone. The coffee pot was empty so she told the customer another pot was brewing and was almost done, it would just be a minute or two. He responds “Figures that a little n*gg*r can’t get even the simplest tasks done. ” and that’s when she grasped the coffee pot, 90% full, and tossed it on him.

Luckily this was in Canada so he had on a big heavy winter coat. No one was injured (although cops and an ambulance showed up) and no one was charged with a crime once the cops got the guy to sincerely apologize to the girl, who accepted his apology.

But yeah, throwing coffee on someone is never a good idea, but I could see how it might come up.

The logic you are following simple does not compute. When you resort to violence – you lose. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Game over.

Words are words – actions are actions. Do you think Martin Luther King Jr. would be known as the person he is if he would have pulled out a gun the first time someone called him a racist term? Do you think Ghandi would be respected if he slapped the first person he disagreed with?

Get a real. If you advocate violence against someone who insults you, then you have no idea what a civilized society is, and you are part of the problem rather than the solution. The entire idea is to bring others up to your level, not to beat them down to it.

So the next time a black person calls me a racist name, I can throw a pot of coffee at him/her as long as I don’t burn them? I don’t agree with your reasoning. Words do not cause physical harm and if you are an adult you should understand they are just words. Even racial slurs are free speech. However, assaulting someone (throwing a pit of hot coffee at them) is a crime.

Why is it okay for a black employee to attack a customer (of any race)? No matter what was said?

I’m interested in if his whole indignant act and throwing of coffee was an overreaction to being caught trying to swindle a free sandwich. It seemed like an instance of where you catch someone lying, and they flare up and yell at the top of their lungs: “You accuse ME of lying? That’s what you’re doing?? Me? Lying? Well, I don’t have to take this!” Then they storm out, but they never admitted they weren’t lying.

Yea, I’d like to see what happened with the payment, it doesn’t impact the crime, but it does impact the social perception of it.

Was the guy mad because he was getting falsely accused of stealing, and was unable to control his temper?
or
Was the guy mad that they caught him trying to steal a $2 sandwich, and lashed out like this to shield his indiscretion?

1. The police have determined he never paid, after reviewing the tape.
2. The victim’s burns are pictured at the link. OWWW.
3. The man the attacker is yelling at, by the door? One of the shop’s owners who’d come running after him.
4. The victim is a cousin of one of the owners and was just helping out while in town. Treating that burn is going to be an ugly insurance battle.
5. The owner followed the attacker outside. Witness: â€œThe owner tried to block the car that the guy was in. The owner had one injured arm so that guy said, â€˜You got one arm, what the hell are you going to do to me?â€™ It was crazy. It was senseless. He didnâ€™t have to throw that coffee on her.â€

the people running that shop need to clean the lens on the security camera. They also need to follow proper security camera practices.

The camera facing the entrance must be a megapixel camera (they are expensive, (around $300 each) but iit is worth it when you are able to get a very clear 1080p image of someones face as they enter the store.

That HD footage paired with the standard 400p cameras will allow a suspects actions to be tracked and the 1080p captures will allow for detailed descriptions *eg facial scars, blemishes and other more detailed identifying characteristics

I got 2 of my friends who own stores to do this and it has worked extremely well for catching minor shoplifters so far.

Did you see a single customer in that store YOU would feel comfortable with (without cameras)? No one even tried to help or intervene – they just stood around slack jawed. Clearly the owners should just go ahead and install bullet proof glass with one of those little merchandise turnstyles, remove any seating in the customer area AND keep the cameras.

It’s not a matter of it being the coffee business. The shop might be in a high-crime area. Or if it’s a 24-hour place, which makes it a likely target. But any place is a potential target. A while back, a nearby Dunkin Donuts — NOT located in a bad area –was robbed with a store full of customers, one of whom was shot in the face for no reason at all. (The victim survived and police did catch the guy. He’s now serving nine life sentences for that and various other crimes.)

There are 4-5 people standing near this man as he’s flipping out and NO ONE bothers to even try to stop him? He assaulted a clerk in front of witnesses and they do absolutely nothing. That irritates the hell out of me. I hope they find this arrogant jerk.

One man did say something. He had a verbal confrontation with the man who threw the coffee & his companion. You can see this near the end of the video, right before coffee-throwing man walks out of the place.
I’ll bet that everyone else was too frightened to get involved. I would have taken photos of his car in hopes of catching his plate. But, I would not have confronted him either.

I was hoping the perp wasn’t black. It wouldn’t make the crime any more or less heinous but as a black male, it’d be one less thing I’m held to account for. Yes, I’m held to account for crap like this.

It’s called stereotyping. Black male = “thug” on verge of committing a criminal or otherwise anti-social act. If a Martian was planning a trip to earth and Googled “black males, his three heads would be bursting with negative programming before he ever stepped out of his cigar-shaped rocketship. And he’d be concerned about one of them stripping his rocketship while parked too. He would be unable to distinguish a thug from a regular (gasp) black dude.

Yeah, I doubt that. On every such post there are people like you throwing a dang pity party about the whole world hates you. Last time I checked, white people are the ones being persecuted because we’re all supposedly racist.

And no, I’m not racist. There’s black people, and there’s n—‘s. There’s white people, and there’s white trash. You aren’t any different than anybody else.

What is with people lately? There are more and more news stories about people getting arrested because they cut in front of a bunch of people waiting in line, were refused service or were otherwise reminded that they are no better than anyone else and reacted violently. Tell someone they can’t have what they want and they’re likely to lose their mind no matter what the reason is.

Speaking of the sense of entitlement and violence…My family and I were our car that was in a line to exit a very busy parking lot. We had spent over a half hour in that line at that point, inching along. A guy walks into the parking lot, gets in his car, and proceeds to cut through parking spaces (not through the aisles) to get to the point where his car is 90 degrees from mine. He inches forward, trying to force his way in. I inch forward with the car in front of me so as to not let the guy in (after all we and all of the other cars in this line had waited and waited and would have to wait longer if he went in front of us). The guy continues to inch forward after I have nearly passed him and he hits the rear passenger door and rear wheel of my car. When my husband shouts at him that he has hit our car he says, “What do you want me to do about it?!!” My husband shouts back, “Back up!!! You are hitting our car!!” The guy yells that we should’ve let him in and other such entitled nonsense. Only after my husband gets out of our car to inspect the damage (only scrapes in the paint luckily) does the guy back up his car and shut up. When my husband gets back into our car, the guy starts shouting again. Funnily enough, the next several cars behind us who saw all of this still didn’t let him in.

I would have yanked that guy out of his car and got some insurance $$ out of him. I’ve done this too, where I inch up to prevent line breakers from getting ahead of people waiting. I really hate the people that just let them in.

Note to self. Do not work in a coffee shop. Guy needs to be locked up for assault. Then he needs to be sued for the doctors bills etc. He’s a grown damn adult for christ’s sake. Act like one. Especially when you have a cup of hot coffee in your hand.

I am so sorry for the woman. Hopefully the workers comp insurance will cover her injuries and her boss isn’t evil an lets her have a day or two off.

What the con the guy was trying is a common one in my area. Sometimes they walk around all day stealing like this. Wearing nice clothing and having money is part of the con – so weak minded people can start to second guess themselves (although as soon as this guy opens hos mouth and speaks you can tell he is a member of the lowest socioecnomic class).

For small amounts of money or merchandise the person throws a fit about already paying or the quality of the food/merchandise. The entitled individual (usually correctly) assumes you would rather not argue about it for a long period of time or that you will be embarrassed by the scene and let them have their way. Of course if you don’t give them what they want they usually just break something in the store, I have never seen a person throw something at the employee. The point of the con/shake down is to make saying “yes” to the petty theft less expensive than sating “no”. Not to get arrested and end up on the news.

I have seen this at my bank, several grocery stores , a craft fair, and a food stand. When the con artist starts the hissy fit – I just put down what I have and leave with my child.

Not to excuse the inexcusable, but he put the correct change fro a ten dollar bill on the counter for the sandwich. It is highly unlikely that he either had the correct change or could have randomly put the correct change on the counter. He paid for the sandwich and felt that she was trying to screw him out of the cost of the sandwich. nevertheless, his handling of the situation was inexcusable. Hers, however, was larcenous.

The employee didn’t do anything wrong. An earlier comment linked another story about this stating the cops determined, after thoroughly reviewing the video tape, that the guy did not pay for the sandwich.

But even if he had paid, that still does not excuse him throwing coffee on an employee. Employees are people, and people make mistakes. I’ve worked at a coffee and doughnut shop and after someone tried pulling this stunt on me, I started carrying a little notepad and pen in my shirt pocket and writing down orders and when the customer paid, the order would get crossed out. If an order wasn’t crossed out then I knew they didn’t pay. My co-workers knew I did this and would always tell me of a customer who’s order I took had paid so I could cross it off. Only one other person tried doing this after I started writing orders down and once I showed them my notepad, they turned red with embarrassment, paid up and sheepishly walked out with their food.

If anyone had ever thrown coffee on me and given me serious burns, they better pray the cops get to them before my husband does.

After watching the video, I can guarantee you that the perpetrator will not be arrested. Remember, where he comes from, the number one rule is “No Snitching”.

Oh, you can say I’m stereotyping. I wish I could say I was. Unfortunately, it’s a stone-cold fact for too many individuals.

A reasonable person would show their receipt to prove that they purchased the item they just purchased seconds ago. That would have ended the discussion there. But, no, the perpetrator felt entitled to a free sandwich for the years of oppression from Caucasians.

Video cameras do not abide by the “no snitching rule.” If they find him and decide to prosecute, he’s likely to be convicted. He may also be in for a personal liability suit, especially if he has money.